Patterning

[phwe9774]

How exactly do I pattern a shotgun? I know where to aim for a given target, range, and shell/choke combination. I know I can kill a turkey around 30-35 and I can pretty much blow his head off inside of 20. Is that all patterning is?

Thanks

[Bake]

Pretty much, yea.

[phwe9774]

Well alright. It's not uncommon at all for me to try and over complicate things. Thanks

[buckhorn_cortez]

True patterning of a shotgun is for choke and load - it's tedious but you can learn a lot about the ammunition and choke.

Get seven 36x36 inch sheets of paper or cardboard. Draw a 15-inch circle and a 30-inch circle on the paper and make at least 5 targets. I usually make 7 targets, and this will become clearer as to why later down the post.

Select the manufacturer and shell you're going to test. For example, Winchester 2-3/4 inch 1-1/2 oz, #4 shot.

Select the choke you want to use for the load and game. This is where you'll have to make a decision. Most of the people interested in patterning shotguns are shooting clay sports games and the patterning is done at 40 yards. You'll have to decide if that's a reasonable distance for your use or not. If it is - use 40 yards. If not, adjust the distance for what you think is best.

Setup the 1st target aim at the center of the target. Shoot one shell at the target and retrieve the target and place a new target at the target holder. Evaluate whether your gun is shooting at the point-of-aim (POA) or not (low, high, left, right).

If your gun shoots to POA, then skip the next part and go directly to shooting 5 test targets. If it needs an aim correction...

Adjust your aim at the target (if needed) by the amount you think it takes to correct for the aim and shoot the second target. Retrieve the target, and evaluate that target and see if you have corrected enough by comparing with the previous target.

With two targets you should be able to figure out how much correction (if any) is required. Now shoot one shot each at the remaining 5 targets.

Take the targets home and get ready for the tedious part.

Open up one of the shotgun shells, take out the pellets and count them. This will tell you how many are loaded by the manufacturer for that shell / load. In theory, you should be able to do this by weight or have a pellet count from the manufacturer - it never works out that way - you have to count the pellets yourself.

Once you have the pellet count you can evaluate the targets. You're looking for three things: 1. number of pellets in the 15-inch circle, number of pellets in the 30-inch circle, gaps (holes) in the pattern that are large enough to miss the target.

I use a highlighter - orange for the 15-inch circle, yellow for the 30-inch circle. I highlight the pellet holes in the target as I count and then write the number in the lower right corner of the target as I finish counting each circle.

Then I take a red Sharpie marker and start evaluating the target for holes (gaps) in the pattern that are large enough to cause a miss on the target. I mark the outline of the hole - and when done, count up the holes and put the hole count under the pellet count.

This will tell you the pellet distribution with the choke and ammunition combination, how even the pellet distribution is and whether there are gaps in the pattern due to the pellets being distorted as they go through choke.

The information will take out the, "I could have sworn I aimed right at the turkey but the SOB just walked away" moments.

Your miss could be: gun isn't shooting to point of aim and/or there are holes in the pattern.

While a lot of work, tedious, and not an exercise for everyone, you can find out how chokes change the pattern, differences between brands of ammunition, and if there are repeatable problems with a specific choke / ammunition combination.

[Dreaming100Straight]

Buckhorn, If I understand you the idea is to shoot to the point of aim (50/50). In shooting flying clay targets, one often wants to shoot to a Point Of Impact ("POI") different than the Point of Aim ("POA"). For example, a gun set to impact a point just slightly above the POA might shoot 60/40. Others like an even higher shooting gun such as a 70/30 or even higher and some even set their guns for a higher point of impact like 90/10. The first number given represents the percentage of pellets above a horizontal line bisecting the center of your pattern with the second being pellets south of the line.

Depending on the clay game in question, some choose a different gun. For skeet, a flatter shooter is often chosen (50/50 or 60/40), trappers usually like a higher shooting gun for rising targets (70/30 to 90/10), and I understand that sporting clay players tend to go with a flat shooter (50/50). Of course, some shoot everything with one gun set one way and we all are aware the caveat to beware the man with one gun.

I believe you are talking about shooting to a stationary or relatively stationary target. If your gun is set up to shoot to where you aim and you aim at a flying target, you will likely miss since it will be somewhere else when your shot gets there.

[buckhorn_cortez]

Buckhorn, If I understand you the idea is to shoot to the point of aim (50/50). In shooting flying clay targets, one often wants to shoot to a Point Of Impact ("POI") different than the Point of Aim ("POA"). For example, a gun set to impact a point just slightly above the POA might shoot 60/40. Others like an even higher shooting gun such as a 70/30 or even higher and some even set their guns for a higher point of impact like 90/10. The first number given represents the percentage of pellets above a horizontal line bisecting the center of your pattern with the second being pellets south of the line.

Depending on the clay game in question, some choose a different gun. For skeet, a flatter shooter is often chosen (50/50 or 60/40), trappers usually like a higher shooting gun for rising targets (70/30 to 90/10), and I understand that sporting clay players tend to go with a flat shooter (50/50). Of course, some shoot everything with one gun set one way and we all are aware the caveat to beware the man with one gun.

I believe you are talking about shooting to a stationary or relatively stationary target. If your gun is set up to shoot to where you aim and you aim at a flying target, you will likely miss since it will be somewhere else when your shot gets there.

Yes - how the POA is setup is exactly as you've stated. Except you won't know if the gun, is in fact, shooting as the manufacturer has stated - or not. I had an O/U that shot right of the aiming point with the factory-provided chokes.

When I changed to a different choke set, the POA was corrected - I would have never known that if I had not tested the gun.

I've also found that the factory chokes for the same gun created holes in the pattern. The holes were large enough that a clay would easily fit through the holes and there was an average of 9 holes in the patterns.

When I changed choke manufacturer and choke type (from continuously tapered to parallel) the number of holes in the pattern reduced to an average of 5 - and the density of the pattern was far more even.

Some people don't care about knowing things like that. I find it interesting...

[Virginian]

Unless you know your gun shoots dead on to POA, better start with 48" sheets of paper. You shoot at the center, and then position a 30" circle to where it covers the most shot holes. Center of that is POI, and it is seldom exactly the same.

[Dreaming100Straight]

That is one way to do it, Virginian, but I am too lazy or to cheap to use that many pieces of paper just to determine POI. For that I will draw a couple of rows of vertical lines on a single sheet of paper, and then draw a short horizontal line through the verticals. I then shoot at them with a tight choke to attempt to determine the poi of my barrels. Of course, some chokes will throw your shot off as Buckhorn describes.

If doing this with paper on a steel plate be careful of richochets should you stand too close. Those ricochets will also tend to blow your paper to bits, which is why I place a layer or two of cardboard between the paper and the plate.

That is just to determine where my barrels are shooting in relation to POA. To get a more accurate idea of how high a barrel shoots with a particular choke, I draw the circle around the center of the pattern and count pellets above an d below the horizontal line. (Actually I am too lazy to count them. I either estimate them or use a program available for free on line. It allows me to take a picture with a digital camera, load the picture into the program, and the program counts the pellet holes for me. This works best with white paper.)

Thanks, Buckhorn. While I have patterned the chokes I use for trap, I only recently really got into skeet and now that you mention it, I never patterned those chokes. Being that they are factory chokes, I really should test them on the p board.

[Virginian]

Easiest way I have found to hang pattern patterning paper, as long as the wind isn't blowing 20 miles and hour, is to just string two pieces of string between two posts and then hang the paper with binder clips top and bottom. I have shot well over 3,000 patterns, so I did a lot of experimenting. Fortunately during most of that time I was working for paper companies so I could get just about any size I wanted.

[darkgael]

Open up one of the shotgun shells, take out the pellets and count them. This will tell you how many are loaded by the manufacturer for that shell / load. In theory, you should be able to do this by weight or have a pellet count from the manufacturer - it never works out that way

Nah. That is obsessive. Given the number of pellets in a 12 gauge load of 1 1/8ths oz of #6 (253) -#8 shot (461), the difference between the number of pellets that you actually find in a given shell and the number that the book says should be there is hardly worth the trouble of dismantling a shell and counting.
Pete

[buckhorn_cortez]

That is obsessive.

Yep. That's just he way I am about things...

For example, allegedly 1-ounce of #8 shot should have 410 pellets. I counted three shells of #8 from the manufacturer I have been using for trap loads and the average count was 381. That's 29 less or 7.6% less than if you go by weight or shot tables. The actual weight was 0.9775 ounce - close to 1 ounce - but not the 410 pellets that "should be" in a 1 ounce load.

If I'm counting the pellets in the target using 410 as the "correct number" I've got a discrepancy in the data because pellets are "missing" from the target. If I know the actual count (381) then the data discrepancy goes away.

If you'd like to see how obsessive I am - here's a link to a test I did and wrote up on a shotgun website on a test I did comparing factory chokes to an aftermarket choke.

What I did for this testing was put a 5-inch diameter target in the middle of a 36x36 inch piece of paper to aim at and then found the center of the pattern after shooting. I then put 10, 20, and 30-inch circles on the pattern after shooting to account for the aim being slightly off-center, and to include the most amount of pellets for each target.

[phwe9774]

Well I'm not a competition shotgun shooter, so my 15-18/25 clays is more than good enough for me. Like I said in my original post, I know where I need to aim for a given target and shell/choke combo. I'm not planning on cutting a shell open to count ~400 pellets, I don't need to be that tedious.

Thanks for the help guys

[darkgael]

Yep. That's just he way I am about things...

I understand....I am that way about other things.
What were your percentage numbers with the 381 counts? What would they have been if you'd used 410?
That is not meant as a challenge...I am honestly curious.
If you have the data handy..
Never mind...I read your article....very thorough...... Looking only at the Beretta IM data, the difference in percent of pellets in a 30 inch circle if you had gone with the 410 count is between 3 and 5 percent.
70 percent at 40 yards with an IM choke is quite acceptable (actual average of those five using the 410 count and your data was 69.6%.)
Interesting note...though the difference in pellet count was 7.6%, the difference in pellets in the 30 inch circle was only 5.7%.

Pete

[Dreaming100Straight]

Buckhorn, That is seriously obsessive and I thought that I was bad. But did you record atmospheric pressure and altitude?

[Virginian]

If you're gonna be exact, you gotta do it all. When I was handloading I counted the number of nickle or copper plated pellets to equal the exact weight I was going for, and then made custom shot dippers to throw the exact amount. Every powder charge went through a powder measure, and I checked weight every 25 rounds. Most rounds went downrange through a chronograph. I did develop some great long range loads. Then the greenies wiped it all out with the non-tox regs. I wish I had the time, energy, and inclination to see what premium high density tungsten would do now.

[Because 'Merica]

all i do is get a life size target of a turkey and shoot him. extend the range til you cant shoot more than 10 pellets in his head. and thats your MAX range. But keep it closer. I like my turkeys to be in around 25-35 yards.